


the timing is right, the stars are aligned

by bechloehuh, eliseboobman (bechloehuh)



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-08
Updated: 2017-07-08
Packaged: 2018-11-29 14:52:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11443161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bechloehuh/pseuds/bechloehuh, https://archiveofourown.org/users/bechloehuh/pseuds/eliseboobman
Summary: You’d think being immortal would be fun. The living forever part. That sounds fun. The everybody else dying in front of your eyes part? That’s not so fun.





	the timing is right, the stars are aligned

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings: multiple major character deaths, mentions of self harm/suicide (it’s light though, no heavy stuff)

 

 _"I'm waking up, thinking how we used to be / I still hang on to our tired dreams / I wish we could turn back the hands of time / replace the poison that you left onto my mind / maybe we'll meet again in another life / maybe we're better in another paradise / maybe we will meet again / maybe we will fall again / in another life / in another life / I can't imagine what this life would be / we holdin' on to fading memories / I love you, you love me, but this love sets you free / but if you choose to leave when I'll hope we meet / maybe we’ll meet again in another life.”_ – another life, afrojack  & david guetta ft. ester dean

* * *

She finds out she’s immortal when she’s twenty two and has to watch everybody in her town die of disease until she’s the last one. No more friends or family left, and no idea why God chose her to be subject of such pain.

You’d think being immortal would be fun. The living forever part. That sounds fun. The everybody else dying in front of your eyes part? That’s not so fun.

She tries to take her life several times, but it always comes back to the same conclusion; she simply cannot die. The only thing that reminds her she’s human and not some sort of monster is her scars, and how she still feels pain and heartbreak the same as everybody else.

Maybe a little too much.

//

The first time Beca Mitchell meets Chloe Beale, Chloe’s lying on top of her covered in mud.

She was walking back into her town late at night when it started to rain heavily. And if she was paying attention to her surroundings, she would have noticed a girl in a white dress – which is now ruined because of the rain and mud – frantically running towards her. But Beca hadn’t noticed her, and she hadn’t noticed Beca, and now she’s laying on top of her, after the two of them had collided with each other and stumbled to the ground.

Beca lets out a groan, pushing the body off of her with a grunt. And she kind of feels bad, because the person lands in a puddle, and she doesn’t look like the type of person to be out this late on her own. She looks about the same age as Beca though – her non-immortal age; Beca’s lost count of how old she _actually_ is – and her hair is a bright red color that Beca’s only ever heard about in stories, and it makes her do a double-take.

Begrudgingly, Beca taps her on the shoulder, holding her hand out to help her up, and she looks up at Beca with a smile. And _God_ , she swears she’s never seen someone with eyes as bright and blue before.

Beca’s shocked when the first thing that comes out of her mouth is, “is this satin?” as she feels the sleeves of the girl’s dress. She tells Beca she’s not certain, and Beca notices she’s wearing a corset – one that pushes her cleavage up enough for Beca to realize she probably shouldn’t be blatantly staring at them like that – and she looks confused when Beca asks her who she is.

She’s very beautiful. Beca noticed that as soon as the girl looked up at her from where she was laying down in the mud, and she’s sure that her dress is very expensive. She feels bad because it’s all dirty, and part of the reason behind that is because Beca pushed her off of her, and she wishes she could do something to make it up to her.

The girl tells Beca her name is Chloe, and she asks her why she’s out this late at night. And she’s very beautiful, so Beca has to ask her to repeat herself, because there’s no way that Beca can pay attention to someone as gorgeous as her without making a fool of herself, or else she wouldn’t be _Beca_. She asks her, also, why she’s out so late, but the girl doesn’t answer.

Beca catches a glimpse of a light out of the corner of her eyes, but the light in this girl’s– _Chloe’s_ eyes is much more enticing, and she wonders, for a brief second, if she’s been sent out here to distract her so she can be kidnapped and sold as a slave, because Jesse has told her stories about that before; stories that Beca never really believed up until now. But the look in the girl’s eyes seems too sincere for that, and Beca curses her mother for giving her the trait of being so trustworthy.

“Why are you dirty?” Beca asks her. “What are you running from?”

“I pray you, do not to tell a soul!” she cries out, and Beca’s eyes widen at her use of language as she grabs onto her shoulders, and Beca’s a little too shaken up to do anything about the ‘personal space’ rule that she has. So she grabs hold of her hands, which are absolutely freezing, and she asks her if she’s okay, and Chloe keeps looking around, as if waiting for something to jump out and attack her.

“What is this?” Beca asks her, to take her mind off of whatever it is she’s worried about, pointing at the pendant around her neck. She looks down, and she lets go of Beca’s hands and opens it, showing a picture of a well-dressed man and a woman in a white dress in each of the oval-shaped frames.

“My parents,” she says, and Beca’s eyes widen as she look closely at them.

“That’s the _king_ and _queen_.” She points, looking up at Chloe, before casting her eyes back to the necklace.

She’s lived through many kings and queens, but this is the first time she’s ever come close to royalty before.

“Yes. My parents.”

“ _You…_ a princess?” Beca tries to make sense, but the words sound weird coming out of her mouth.

But Chloe nods, and Beca immediately drops to her knees. She has no idea why people do this, but years of living have taught her to respect royalty, and apparently this is how you do that. She bows her head, and she feels Chloe’s hands on her shoulders again, but this time they’re pulling her up, telling her that’s not necessary.

“I need you to hide me!”

And Beca doesn’t ask her _why_ , or _where_ , or _how_.

She just _does_.

They last six and a half days together – with stolen milk, cider, bread, tomatoes, and small herrings from the market in Beca’s town – both holed up in a den in the woods, before Chloe tells Beca she has to go back home.

Beca’s never been in love. Her mother told her years ago, before she died, that you know when you’re in love by the way your body reacts to their voice and their touch. Which is why, when Chloe presses a kiss to Beca’s cheek and it burns but makes her feel at home at the same time, she realizes that this is the first time she’s _ever_ felt like this before.

She grabs Chloe’s hands, asks her if she’s sure, and after Chloe nods her head, Beca pulls her closer.

“I’ll never forget you,” Beca says, lifting Chloe’s hands up to her mouth and pressing a soft kiss to each one. “Ever.”

“Dearest,” Chloe whispers, a hushed breath meant only for the pair’s ears, and Beca smiles at her as Chloe cups her cheek.

“My princess.”

“Chloe,” she corrects, and Beca presses another kiss to Chloe’s knuckles.

“My _Chloe_.”

She smiles, kisses Beca on the lips, and she’s gone when Beca opens her eyes.

When Beca returns back to her town that night, Jesse doesn’t believe her when she tells him that the reason she’s been missing for a week is because she was falling in love with a princess.

Beca doesn’t believe it either.

//

Beca lives through the deadliest diseases known to man. She never catches them – the perks of being immortal, she guesses – and the people in each town she visits are too busy either being sick or helping the sick to be suspicious of her health.

She volunteers at hospitals, becomes a nurse, helps doctors perform surgeries, and other stuff she’d very much like to forget in this lifetime. But it’s not all bad. She gets to stop for a second and watch people grow up. Watches them learn, develop, blossom. It’s almost poetic.

But they eventually die, like everybody she’s known, and Beca is alone again, and she figures that’s never going to change.

//

Years pass before she meets Chloe again.

And she knows it’s Chloe. She’d recognize those blue eyes anywhere. She’s blonde this time though, which startles her.

It’s all an accident. Beca’s friends are starving and she’s poor. Amy and Stacie are sick, and they won’t be able to survive until the end of the month if it carries on like this.

She knows they’ll die eventually, but they’re the first friends she’s made in years, and if she can prolong their life just a little bit, it’ll make her feel less alone.

It starts off with small lootings. She steals a few pieces of bread a day – maybe some eggs if she’s feeling risky – moving from stall to stall. She gets caught once, and she cries and begs and tells the man standing over her, threatening to cut her hands off, that her family is poor and her mother is dying. He must think she’s much younger than she actually is, and he tells her she shouldn’t be out on her own, and he takes the loaf back and tells her that he won’t do anything if she promises not to steal from him again.

She steals some milk from him a few days later and he doesn’t suspect a thing.

She meets Chloe on a cold October evening when she’s crouched down in front of a larger stall, holding a basket, ready to steal a few apples that are on display in front of the stall. The girl crawls towards her, a smile on her face as she reaches up and picks up an apple with ease, and Beca wonders why she looks so God damn happy.

“Good day,” the girl whispers, and the sound of her voice is what prompts Beca to remember exactly who she is. She stumbles backwards a little as Chloe holds her hand out. “I’m Chloe.”

“Beca.”

She doesn’t know who Beca is. She repeats her name, testing it on her tongue, before taking a bite of her apple.

“Goodbye, Beca,” she says, and she’s crawling away from the stall, weaving in between the hordes of people as Beca looks out at her. She disappears before Beca’s mind has a chance to catch up, and she doesn’t stop thinking about her for days.

Stacie asks her why she’s stealing and Beca tells her it’s because she’s scared. Scared that Amy and Stacie will die and leave her alone like Jesse, like her mother, like her sister, like everybody else Beca has ever known.

Beca agrees when Amy tells her to cut down on the stealing before people start to get suspicious. She only steals bits of food and medicine when necessary, but it’s not enough.

Amy dies one night when Beca’s out trying to break into the local pharmacy.

Stacie is weak but she hates that Beca goes out stealing food for her on her own. It takes some convincing, but Beca lets her come with her, wrapped in stolen blankets that Stacie had made to look like a big dress.

Stacie almost gets caught when she tries to steal her first piece of bread, but Beca creates a diversion by falling into the stall, knocking down a few crates of apples. Stacie uses the distraction to pick up a few more pieces of bread and some onions as the man behind the stall yells at Beca for ruining his product. She manages to get away with an excuse that she needs to see if her sister is okay because she’s sick, and the man lets her go. It must be her baby-face.

By the time Beca gets back to Stacie, she’s sat nibbling the bread, offering her some with a proud smile.

She dies a week later.

There’s no funeral because neither of them can afford it, so Beca digs Stacie’s grave herself, next to the one she dug for Amy, and prepares a speech. Nobody comes to listen, but it’s enough closure she needs.

Beca wishes that she could count the days until she’ll eventually die, but she knows that she’s waiting for the impossible.

Beca never sees Chloe again in that lifetime.

//

It’s hard to tell when one life is supposed to end and the next is supposed to begin. Beca stopped counting years ago, but somehow she still knows. It’s like a sixth sense. The world seems the same, but she still recognizes when things change.

After Amy and Stacie, Beca vowed not to get close to anybody ever again. She isn’t aware of any other immortals, but she swears she sometimes sees multiple people she recognizes from past lives in various places. She thought being immortal meant traveling and doing anything she wanted without getting caught, meeting amazing people, watching the world grow, and witnessing history in front of her very eyes.

Being immortal is tiring.

She sleeps most of the time. She doesn’t need to eat, but eating makes her feel human, so she only wakes up to make a stew which just ends up going rotten within a day. She starts to keep a journal and she calls each time period a lifetime, because it’s easier than naming the dates of when the people she loves die.

In one lifetime, she sleeps for three years until another disease wipes out another town, forcing her to move. In the next lifetime, she becomes a surgeon and saves hundreds of lives.

She purposely gets caught at a crime scene one day, even though she had nothing to do with it, just to get arrested. It’s a sorry for all the crimes she’s committed in the past, but it doesn’t make her feel better like she thought it would.

The prisons in this age are gross. They’re filled with rats and the bars have loose nails that are guaranteed to give you infection if you cut yourself on them. She tries it one day. Nothing but a scar on her hand remains.

She doesn’t get a cell mate until months later – she thinks it’s months – and she knows exactly who it is just by listening to them cry that they’re innocent. And she wants so badly to say the girl’s name, but Chloe doesn’t know her and technically, in this life, she doesn’t know Chloe.

It takes a few days for Chloe to introduce herself, and Beca shoots back a friendly smile and tells her that this place isn’t so bad. She’s lying, obviously. She’s had the same clothes on for weeks and the person in the cell opposite them has been dead for two days.

Chloe calms her though. She makes her forget about how badly she wants to die. They decorate the cell walls with noughts and crosses and small doodles, and Beca lets Chloe fall asleep with her head in her lap on some occasions when Chloe cries herself to sleep.

They tell each other secrets and talk about the future. What they think life will be like a hundred years from now. Whether medicine will improve or if the population will just die out.

Sometimes Beca thinks being in prison is better than being out there in the real world. She gets free warmth and a friend, and she doesn’t have to worry about being labeled a witch every time she leaves her home.

Which is why she should’ve known that things were going too well for her.

When Chloe leaves with a guard and never comes back, Beca figures that maybe she was never made to love another. When she looks around and sees that the only thing remaining on Chloe’s side of the cell is her pendant, sitting on the piece of wood that’s supposed to be a bed, she picks it up and puts it around her own neck. She opens it and there’s a photo of Chloe inside, next to a picture of Chloe’s parents, and she grips it hard and sobs for the first time in decades.

It’s years later when she escapes after a fire breaks out in the prison, that she realizes that all the people she once knew before she was thrown behind bars are now probably dead.

She’s proven right when she returns to an empty town, and she doesn’t even pack her things before she’s leaving once again.

//

Beca learns to not hope.

She lives her life how she’d live it if she wasn’t immortal. She gets jobs and takes up hobbies like real people do, and she only moves when she realizes she’s been living in the same place and looking the same age for too long.

She doesn’t make any friends – she doesn’t need any – but she meets another immortal named Emily at a small market in Paris. She knows she’s immortal because it’s the same person who’d helped her save a little boy’s life all those years ago before Amy and Stacie died, and Emily recognizes her too.

They don’t acknowledge each other until they run into each other again a month later in the park. Emily asks her if she’s stalking her, and Beca asks her if she’s worth stalking.

They’re not friends but they’re together in this world forever, so they stay in touch through letters and occasional meet-ups where they sit in silence and drink tea.

Beca tells Emily about Chloe, and Emily tells Beca about her past lovers. They drink wine together and tell stories about their past. Talk about what their life was like before everything went to shit. What their childhoods were like before they realized they’re on this planet forever, who they look up to, and what they would do if they weren’t immortal.

 ** _Dear Beca_** , one letter reads. **_I’m leaving Paris. I found a job that pays good money overseas, in England, and I wanted you to know I won’t be at this address anymore. Any letters you send here from now on, I won’t receive._**

**_I’ve heard England is nice. There’s a man there. His name is Benjamin. He loves me and I think I love him too. I know what you’re thinking. He’ll die and I’ll be alone again, but I don’t want to live my life like that anymore. Maybe he’ll die but he’ll make my own life worth living for a few years, and that’s enough for me._ **

**_I’ll write to you when I arrive._ **

**_Emily_ **

**_P.s. You shouldn’t have to be afraid to love._ **

She never receives the letter once Emily arrives in England. She figures it got lost in the mail or something, but really, she only thinks that because she doesn’t want to believe that Emily didn’t actually write the letter.

 _Great_ , Beca thinks. _The one other person in this world who’ll never die, and she leaves anyway._

The last letter Emily sent her lives in her purse for months before she decides that Emily is right. She shouldn’t be afraid. She needs to find Chloe. What for, she’s not actually sure. For all she knows, Chloe could not exist in this lifetime, but Beca needs to find her. It’s been so long since Beca’s seen Chloe that the only thing proving she ever existed, is the picture in the locket that’s still around Beca’s neck.

//

It takes years, but Beca finds her living near the beach on the coast of Italy.

She’s older than Beca had expected, around fifty, which is impressive. Beca’s never known anybody to live past forty, and from what she’s seen, Chloe lives alone. Her house is small, so different to the royal castle she lived in all those lifetimes ago, and her front yard is a mess. It’s her home though. _Chloe’s_ home. Beca just needs to work up the courage to introduce herself.

She watches people ride by in a horse and carriage and she hops on the back of one as she wonders whether Chloe will recognize her.

Eventually, after visiting Chloe’s house every day for a few weeks, she works up the courage to knock.

The person who opens the door isn’t Chloe though.

It’s Chloe but it’s not _Chloe_. Her eyes are way too sad, and she doesn’t have the same beaming smile that Beca’s so in love with.

“Miss,” Beca pauses. She shouldn’t know her name. “Hi. I’m–“

“–I’m not interested in what you have to sell. Good day.”

She goes to shut the door, but Beca reaches out. “Wait!” She looks at Chloe, speechless. What do you say to the woman you’ve been searching the world for?

“I need a job.”

It’s not the smartest thing she’s said, but Chloe looks as shocked with her as she feels, and she accepts the invitation when Chloe asks her if she’d like to come in.

She doesn’t know how much money Chloe has in this old bungalow near the beach, but when Chloe tells her she could help clean her front yard and plant some seeds, Beca accepts with a polite smile and a “yes ma’am.”

“Please, call me Chloe,” she says.

It doesn’t feel right. This Chloe is old. She’s beautiful but she’s old. Her skin isn’t the soft, tan skin that Beca used to admire. Her hair is grey, not red, and her eyes aren’t as optimistic and bright as before.

She’s _Chloe_ , though, and Beca has found her.

Chloe pays her well, and she makes Beca lemonade and they talk. It’s weird, Beca thinks, that this woman has so easily welcomed Beca into her home, but she figured that maybe Chloe has been lonely for too long.

They have a lot in common if that’s the case.

Beca cleans the yard and plants new flowers that she’d stolen from a farmer’s field, and she smiles when Chloe tells her that it looks beautiful.

“You remind me of someone,” Chloe says one day, and Beca’s heart stops. “My little sister. She was so sweet like you.”

Beca smiles politely and she tells Chloe that she’s just doing her job, and Chloe makes her a sandwich and sends her on her way. As much as she’d like to stay, she knows that Chloe needs her space.

When she eventually finishes Chloe’s yard – no matter how long she puts it off for – she figures that she needs to get ready to say goodbye. It’ll be weird if she doesn’t. She can’t stay here forever, and she knows for a fact that Chloe will die soon, so she wants to get the goodbye out of the way now before she regrets it.

Chloe bakes her some cookies and tells her that she’s done a wonderful job, and the smile she gives Beca reminds her of the smile she had given her when they bumped into each other at the market all those years ago. It almost makes Beca cry.

“I’ve got to say, you are certainly a lovely girl, Beca.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“You’re sweet. You’ll keep in touch, right?”

“Of course.”

She keeps an eye on Chloe every day for a year until one day, Chloe doesn’t come outside at 9AM to water her plants like she usually does.

She’d died in her sleep, peaceful and quiet, and Beca doesn’t cry because she knows she’ll see her again.

//

Chloe’s young again the next time they meet.

Her hair is brown and her eyes are still as blue as ever, and she’s a waitress at a small coffee shop in New York City. Beca’s not sure what brings them both together all the time – fate, love, chance – but she doesn’t complain.

Chloe starts to recognize her when she orders the exact same thing at the coffee shop five weeks in a row.

“Coffee with cream, two sugars and a flapjack.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Coming right up.”

Beca never gets bored of seeing Chloe’s smile. It still floors her every time. She sits at her usual table near the window, and she’s shocked when Chloe brings her order over and sits opposite her instead of walking away. Her apron has one single coffee stain on it, the pencil in her pocket is bright purple, and Beca’s never felt so in love.

“So, my friend Aubrey thinks you’re weird.”

“Excuse me?”

“She thinks it’s weird that you come into the shop every single day to order the exact same thing.”

“I guess it is kinda weird.”

“Why don’t you ever try anything new?”

Beca tilts her head. “Like what?”

Chloe falls in love with her within a month, and it’s the first time Beca’s felt alive in decades. Chloe helps her try new things; new hobbies, new foods, new clothes, and Beca asks Chloe to marry her when Chloe turns twenty five.

Their wedding is quick and quiet, and Chloe thinks it’s weird that none of Beca’s family know about the secret wedding, but Beca carries her bridal style over to the bed in their small apartment and tells her that they’re conservative and don’t agree with them being together.

Since same-sex marriage isn’t a thing, they’re not _officially_ married, so Beca is denied entry to Chloe’s funeral when she dies of the flu.

She watches from afar as Chloe’s mother sobs into her hands, and she doesn’t cry because Chloe never liked it when she cried.

//

In one life, Beca and Chloe are total opposites. Chloe hates Beca’s guts, and it takes years for Beca to get over the fact that Chloe chooses Tom over her.

In another life, they get hitched young and buy a house together and are so in love that Beca thinks she’s going to die of having too much love in her heart.

In one life, Chloe leaves her for another woman. In the next, she stays.

//

When a war breaks out, Beca gives up hope of ever finding Chloe.

She becomes a medic and helps soldiers’ wounds on the battlefield, and not once does she think about Chloe Beale. She has a job, and that job is to protect, to fix, to save lives.

When Chloe bursts through the door wheeling a soldier over towards Beca, Beca almost faints. She instinctively grabs the necklace around her neck, and it feels like the world stops spinning. But then Chloe is yelling at her, telling her this man is going to bleed out if they don’t do something _now_ , and Beca can’t think about anything else but saving this man’s life.

They work together to stop the bleeding and cauterize his wounds, but he’s in pain and screaming and it reminds Beca of the people in the prison all those years ago. The people in her town who were suffering from disease. All the deaths she’s witnessed over all these centuries, and one man screaming out in pain is what brings her to her knees.

She’s tired. At the end of the day, she tries her best – her best never has been good enough – and Chloe is patient, but she’s still tired.

The man dies of too much blood loss, and Chloe calls in somebody to take his body away.

It’s only when Chloe sits down beside her, their backs against the bed, that Beca realizes she’s been sobbing.

Chloe puts her arm around Beca and she lets her rest her head against her shoulder and she cries until she can’t breathe, and Chloe shushes her and strokes her hair, and it’s the first time Beca’s been held in years.

She wants so badly to just tell Chloe. Tell her that she’s in love with her, she’s always in love with her, and she always will be in love with her. But Chloe doesn’t know her and she has a wedding ring on her finger, and Beca’s never been great with timing.

//

After the eleventh time they meet, Beca’s not sure she’ll ever _not_ find Chloe. Which is why Beca learns to love Chloe in fractions.

She has an endless amount of love in her heart for Chloe, so she saves some of it for other lifetimes. Sometimes she doesn’t use any of it. Sometimes Chloe is a bitch and she hates Beca’s guts, and Beca learns to not love this Chloe. But then the next time they meet, Chloe looks so beautiful, grinning at the snowfall in her big coat and a beanie that’s way too big for her head. And Beca can’t help it. She loves Chloe like she’s never loved her before, and she thinks sometimes Chloe knows even before she says it.

“You love me, don’t you?” Chloe asks her. They’re in a bookshop in England, browsing the History section.

“I do.”

“I swear sometimes I know how you’re feeling before you even know how you’re feeling.”

Beca smiles. “You love me?”

“Is that a question?”

“I think it is. _Do_ you?”

Chloe puts down the book she’d been looking at and turns to fully face Beca. “I do.”

//

Out of all the people Beca thought she’d run into in Greece, Emily Junk is not one of them.

It doesn’t shock her. All these centuries being alive, Beca finds it hard to be shocked at anything anymore.

Emily looks happy to see her, and as mad as she was at Emily for never writing to her, she’s happy to see her too. So they hug and tell each other “it’s good to see you” and they live their lives as if one of them had never left.

When Beca loses hope of finding Chloe in one lifetime, Emily asks her to move in with her. After all, Beca’s been living out of a suitcase for a few years now, and there’s no better place to live than near the beach in warm and sunny Greece, right?

She’s not sure what she has with Emily but one day when they end up in bed together, she doesn’t exactly have any complaints. It feels nice to not have to sleep in an empty bed.

“I’ve never… with a girl.”

“I’ve never with a man,” Beca shoots back, head resting on the pillow as she looks over at Emily, and they both smile.

“You’re something else, Beca Mitchell.”

Beca watches as Emily sits up and perches on the edge of the bed as she puts her clothes back on. Her fingers run up Emily’s bare back, and she pulls her back down onto the bed.

“Stay with me,” Beca whispers, and she hears Emily sigh as she moves closer.

“So needy,” Emily says, but she’s holding Beca and it feels nice.

//

Another war breaks out by the time Beca finds Chloe again. Only this time, neither of them are a part of it.

This lifetime feels different. It doesn’t feel real. She doesn’t help anybody. She doesn’t become a nurse, a surgeon, a doctor; she saves zero lives in this war.

And in a cynical way, it makes her feel good. Makes her feel free.

All that changes when she meets Chloe again though.

Chloe is in a wheelchair. And as much as she wants to run up to her and ask her if she’s okay, ask her what happened, ask her who did this, she knows that would be weird and unacceptable. Chloe doesn’t know her yet.

Beca can see though, that Chloe’s legs are missing. She looks at her from across the road, and she wonders if Chloe was born like that or if it had happened recently. She wonders if Chloe was in pain when it happened, and her heart knots as she thinks about Chloe being in pain.

She watches as an apple drops from Chloe’s bowl on her lap as she wheels her way through the busy street, and she takes that as her cue.

“Miss!” She yells, jogging over the road. She picks up the apple, wiping it on her jacket, before tapping Chloe on the shoulder. “You,” she breathes, “you dropped this.”

Chloe looks down at her bowl of apples and then back up at Beca, smiling shyly before reaching out.

“Right, thank you,” she says, taking the apple from Beca. She’s about to set off again when Beca puts her hand gently on one of the handles and asks Chloe where she’s going and if she needs any help.

“Bus stop,” Chloe says, and Beca smiles as she takes both handles and wheels Chloe through the crowd.

They make small talk, and Chloe tells Beca that in case she was wondering, she lost her legs in the war. Beca was wondering, but she didn’t want to ask. She has manners, contrary to popular belief, which is why she tells Chloe that she doesn’t need to talk about it.

Chloe doesn’t mind though. She tells her that she’d been tending to a wounded soldier when a bomb went off in the tent, and she smiles through tears as she tells Beca that she’s lucky to be alive.

Beca kneels on the floor next to her when they get to the bus stop, and she tells Chloe that she’ll be seeing her around, and Chloe thanks Beca for helping her get through the busy street.

Just as Beca stands up and starts to walk away, Chloe shouts her name. She turns around, looking at Chloe with a question in her smile. “What is it?”

Chloe throws her an apple and tells her thanks again. All Beca can do is nod.

That night she talks about Chloe for hours to Emily as they lie naked in bed together, until she falls asleep gripping the pendant in her hand.

//

“What are you thinking?”

“I think – no, I know. I need her.”

“It’s never that easy, Beca.”

“I know that. After the first time she left me, I knew not to expect anything. I never deserved anything. But she’s here now, alive, and I’m here, and we’re free.”

“Are you?”

Beca looks out at the Chloe she’s grown so familiar with. The Chloe who smiles and laughs and looks as beautiful as the first day they met. She’s smiling, despite everything she’s been through, and Beca always thought that this life was different than the rest.

“We’re alive at the same time again. That has to mean something. And I’ve been alive for centuries but I’d never understood the world until I looked into her eyes. Look at her, Emily.”

“I see her.”

Beca shakes her head. “Not in the way I do.”

No matter how many times Beca sees it, watching Chloe die is never easy. Sometimes she’ll be in pain, begging Beca to help stop this, and sometimes she goes peacefully in a hospital bed surrounded by the people she loves.

When Beca sees Chloe bleeding out in an alleyway down the side of the road due to a stab wound, she swears that her heart tears in two.

“Stay with me! Don’t die on me Chloe!” she’s yelling through sobs, but Chloe doesn’t hear her.

Their relationship had barely even started before Chloe is torn away from her, and Beca curses whoever it is up there, whatever higher power there is – if there is one in the first place – to _please_ stop this. To stop making her suffer, and most of all, to stop making Chloe suffer. Because maybe Beca deserves this, but Chloe certainly doesn’t.

And the world seems to shift that day, but Beca is still sobbing on the ground as Chloe’s body is taken away, and she doesn’t move for days.

//

The years without Chloe are lonelier than Beca has ever felt.

She has Emily but soon, Emily finds somebody else. And Beca’s jealous. Because Emily’s not hooked on a past lover like Beca is, and Beca wishes that it was easy for her to move on like Emily does.

But the thought of never seeing Chloe again, that’s what truly scares her. Not the wars she goes through, not the constant _want_ to die, and certainly not everybody else dying around her. Never seeing Chloe again without truly saying goodbye absolutely terrifies her.

She starts to worry when she goes years without seeing Chloe again. Eventually, she stops looking, hoping that it’s enough for Chloe to lead herself to Beca. If they’re meant to be, they’ll find each other, and all that.

She sleeps through the sixties and misses the history that she’s usually so proud to sit back and watch, and it’s only when the 2000s come around that she thinks now is probably the time to get her life back together.

It’s Emily’s idea to sign Beca up for college in Atlanta. She says it’ll help Beca meet new people her age and make new friends, and Beca thinks it’s totally pointless because there’s no way she’s making any new friends who are non-immortals any time soon. She’s sick of watching her friends die.

“And I mean, technically I don’t exist,” Beca tells Emily as she drops Beca off at the college entrance. And Beca’s never been one to me amazed but when she looks at the building, she can admit it’s impressive.

“Look what you’ve been missing, Becs,” Emily says, and Beca frowns. Chloe calls her Becs. She had almost forgot.

She shakes her head, looking back out at the quad of students moving into their new dorms.

It’s impressive. Almost enough to make her actually _want_ to be here.

“I don’t exist,” she repeats, and Emily sighs.

“You realize how easy it is to make a fake birth certificate and ID, right?”

Beca squint. “No, I don’t know how easy that is. How do you know that?”

“Enough questions. Go.”

“I hate this.”

“Go!” Emily repeats.

With a sigh, she gets out of the car and pulls her suitcase out of the trunk, putting her headphones onto her head as she waves goodbye to Emily. It’s not a goodbye though, because they’ll see each other again, which is why she doesn’t worry when Emily drives off without telling her she’ll call like she usually does.

She drops her suitcases off at her dorm, after being serenaded by some boy who looked like a puppy in the back of some random car, and she wonders if that was the man who had died on the operating table decades ago.

Whether it is or not, she doesn’t hang around to find out.

She sees a poster about the activities fair on the main quad, and she goes because there doesn’t seem to be anything else to do here, and her roommate is almost as scary as some of the stuff she’s had to face in all the wars she’s been in.

And maybe it’s fate or maybe it’s God playing with her, but when she sees Chloe giving out flyers for a singing group, her smile as big as ever, and looking as beautiful as the first day they met, Beca thinks maybe this life is when they’ll finally get it right.

She walks over to the stall, stopping in front of Chloe.

“ _Hi._ Any interest in joining our acapella group?”


End file.
